A free and evolving resource for adoptive parents and carers

Tip: Recognisable Places / Geo-tagging Caution

Tip: Recognisable Places

There’s a potential increased risk if you post personal status updates, photos or videos of easily identifiable places, particularly when they are in your locality or you visit them often. Consider how far you share these in particular.

Tip: Geo-tagging caution

Be aware that many cameras, mobile phones and tablets now include GPS and can use this to ‘geo-tag’ your photos and video. In other words, it identifies extremely accurately where the photo or video was taken.

Not all services automatically use this, but many can and do. If you are concerned about this, you need to find out how to turn off automatic geotagging of your photos and videos on the devices you use (it’s usually buried in a settings menu somewhere, you may need to ask online or scour the manual to find out how to do it). Alternatively, though not as secure if things go wrong, you can ensure that services don’t post geographical information about photos.

This doesn’t mean you can’t provide your own description of the location where something was taken, but it means you have much more control.